Tax Cut Comments By Dick Morris

Tax Cut Comments By Dick Morris

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

May 29, 2003 -- THE hazard of passing a landmark bill is that you lose the use of the associated issue in the next election: A president in his first term is banking the achievement, at the risk of making it harder to campaign for a second term. Since gratitude is a slender basis for winning re-election, most politicians would rather leave their agenda at least partially unfulfilled to run on it for another term.

But President Bush, in an unparalleled act of political brilliance, has managed to figure out how to have his cake and eat it too: Pocket the accomplishment of a tax cut, while preserving it as an issue for the next election.

He did it by letting himself be "defeated" in his demand for a $750 billion tax cut stretching over the next 10 years. Instead, he accepted what appeared to be less than half a loaf, agreeing to a $320 billion cut that sunsets in 2006.

That deal -with the Democrats and moderates in his own party - looks like typical legislative compromise, but is actually a move of incredible political acumen: The "sunset" provision, under which the tax cut automatically lapses unless expressly extended by new legislation, makes taxes a front-and-center issue of the 2004 election.